The New Yorker: George Maciunas

The New Yorker: George Maciunas

GEORGE MACIUNAS

Maciunas (1931-78) is best known as a leading member of the sixties Fluxus movement. The charts, diagrams, films, documents, and atlases here bear some marks of Fluxus—particularly the lo-fi, D.I.Y. elements—but they also draw heavily on Maciunas’s personal history and heritage (his mother was Russian, his father Lithuanian). The “Atlas of Russian History” is a painstakingly drawn series of history-book maps diagramming the progress of Russia starting in 7 B.C. Similarly, the “Biography Chronicling Activity Between 1939-1978” and “Diagram of Historical Development of Fluxus” serve as conceptual self-portraits. Others,like his ancient-Chinese art-history outlines, look like final-exam study notes but function as simultaneously didactic and user-friendly art. Through Oct. 28.